With the "Snowball Earth" hypothesis, scientists have proposed that our planet was once encased under a thick layer of ice and snow. Life could only survive huddled around hot vents deep under water. But now scientists have found fossil evidence of creatures that lived during this period, but were photosynthesizing. This means they needed to live under thin enough ice for sunlight to get through. It's possible that the entire planet wasn't encased in ice, instead there were large patches of thin ice, or even open water near the equator.

The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope took this incredible image of galaxy NGC 1350, which is located 85 million light years away in the Fornax constellation. Astronomers classify it as an Sa(r) type galaxy, which means it's a barred spiral with two central regions. It is 130,000 light years across, so it's a little larger than our own Milky Way.

Here's an amazing picture of the Antares-Rho Ophiuchus region of the Milky Way taken by Thomas Davis from his home observatory.

Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the Universe Today astrophotography forum or email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.

A supernova that exploded 41,000 years ago might have led to the extinction of mammoths, according to researchers at Berkeley Lab. They found ancient mammoth bones peppered with iron-rich grains that had been traveling at 10,000 km/second. These grains might have been emitted from a supernova that exploded about 250 light-years away from Earth. It's also possible that debris from the supernova coalesced into comet-like objects; one could have struck the earth about 13,000 years ago.

The latest images released from the Hubble Space Telescope pinpoint an enormous galaxy located almost 13 billion light-years away - at a time when the Universe was only 800 million years old. This galaxy contains 8 times the mass of stars as the Milky Way, and really shouldn't exist according to current astronomical theories. This research demonstrates that mature stars and large galaxies formed much earlier than astronomers had ever expected.

Paul Mayo captured this photograph of NGC 253 from his backyard observatory in Newcastle Australia. Paul used a Canon EOS 300D to take 7 separate images with his 0.3 metre telescope. You can see more of Paul's amazing photos at his website.

Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the Universe Today astrophotography forum or email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has arrived at Florida's Cape Canaveral to be prepared for launch. If all goes well, New Horizons will lift off atop an Atlas V rocket on January 11, 2006, and begin the decade-long journey to Pluto. It's equipped with seven scientific instruments, and will study Pluto and its moon Charon during a relatively brief flyby. The mission may even be extended, giving the spacecraft an opportunity to study additional objects in the region.

ESA engineers have figured out how to extend the life of SMART-1's ion engine, giving the mission more time to orbit the Moon. The mission was originally supposed to end in May 2006, but by conserving fuel and changing the way it engine operates, the engineers have pushed its demise back to July 2006. SMART-1 is completely out of fuel now, though, and will coast until its decaying orbit smashes it into the Moon.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Ah, yes. Dark skies are ours again and we'll begin the week with the magnificent M2. There will be plenty of galactic action as we study NGC 7331, hunt down Stephan's Quintet, and relax in the stellar swarm of M34. For early risers, the sky offers some splendid scenery as two planets join two visible open clusters. But dark skies always mean just a little more, don't they? Then think Caldwell 44 and 43 as you open your eyes to the skies, because...

Because here's what's up!

Shahriar Davoodian took this cool picture of the Dumbell Nebula (M27) from Damavand, Iran. He used a Canon EOS 300D attached to a Meade LX90 8" Telescope with a 4 minute exposure.

Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the Universe Today astrophotography forum or email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.

That which was old is new again. The Moon, once thought a 'fait accompli', is now firmly back in the centre of many people's targets. We have to thank George W. Bush in giving his recent directive to NASA. This, together with NASA's announcement on how they plan to return to the moon, seems to indicate a golden lunar age has returned. You'd think smiles would be positively radiant at the recent seventh meeting of the International Lunar Exploration and Utilization Working Group, held from September 18-23 in Toronto, Ontario. Yes, many smiles enlivened the group. However, these smiles weren't like that of the child holding a cookie but like those of wise parents checking the list of ingredients. For this cookie has come before but disappeared all too quickly.

Instead of waiting for asteroids to slam into the Earth, the European Space Agency is working on a mission that will reach out and try to shift a space rock's orbit. The mission is called Don Quijote, and it will consist of two spacecraft: an orbiter and an impactor; similar to NASA's Deep Impact. The Sancho orbiter will rendezvous with a target asteroid and carefully calculate its orbit before and after the Hidalgo impactor slams into it. The ESA has chosen two candidate asteroids as potential targets, and will make a final decision in 2007.

A Boeing Delta II rocket successfully launched the first of a new class of modernized Block IIR global positioning system satellites early Monday morning. The rocked lifted off from Space Launch Complex 17A at 0337 GMT (11:37 pm EDT Sunday) from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. This new class of GPS satellites will broadcast additional signals to improve civilian and military accuracy, and prevent any jamming attempts.

Researchers answer their true calling by flinging themself headlong into discovering and perhaps add a little more to humanity's collective knowledge. Their friends, sleep and even food get deleted to a secondary role as just one more lead, one more calculation or one more experiment could endow understanding. The cost for a researcher in answering this call might be years of personal neglect, even though society benefits greatly. Marcelo Gleiser in his book The Dancing Universe takes us through the history of physics from the gods of yesteryear to the cosmologists of today. He focuses on some of the really productive researchers and, in so doing, gives us a clearer understanding of physics, people and our society.

Joe Cahak captured this beautiful photograph of light from the setting Sun glinting off the launch trail left by yesterday's Minotaur rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the Universe Today astrophotography forum or email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.

The European Space Agency's Envisat satellite took this photo of Hurricane Rita on September 22, 2005 as it was passing Southern Florida. Envisat can use its radar instruments to peer through a hurricane's clouds and measure the roughness of the ocean beneath it. This is how scientists can estimate the wind speed of the storm at various points. Rita is expected to slam into Texas or Louisiana early Saturday morning.

By looking at the most distant Universe, astronomers are hoping to learn what kinds of galaxies formed first, leading through mergers to the mature galaxies we see today. The more galaxies you look at, the better the predictions. A team of French and Italian astronomers have used the VIsible Multi-Object Spectrograph (VIMOS) instrument on one of the ESO's 8.2 m telescopes to image and measure thousands of galaxies. They found 2 to 6 times as many early galaxies with vigorous star formation than astronomers had previously expected.

In 1572, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe observed and studied an exploding star that would later be named after him. NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory shows that the Tycho's Supernova remnant is an expanding bubble of debris which is inside a larger bubble of high-energy electrons. Astronomers think that remnants like this could be a source of cosmic rays; high-energy nuclei found throughout the galaxy which constantly bombard the Earth.

To have the current elements in the Universe, cosmologists believe there had to be several generations of stars, building up heavier and heavier elements. But what did that first generation of stars look like? They were probably huge, weighing 50-500 times the mass of the Sun. They lived quickly and then died as massive supernovae that seeded the surrounding space with heavier elements forged during this explosion. They could even be the source of gamma ray bursts, which are the most powerful known explosions in the Universe.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft will have its mission extended by one Martian year - approximately 23 months - beginning December 2005. Since it began science operations in early 2004, Mars Express has made several findings: volcanic and glacial processes happened quite recently; there are small quantities of methane gas in the Martian atmosphere, which could indicate life; and large bodies of liquid water might have lasted under the surface of Mars for a long period of time.

Cassini recently took this beautiful photograph of Saturn's rings, sweeping across the sky. Its tiny moon Pan (26 kilometers, or 16 miles across) is barely visible inside the Encke gap, in the middle of the photograph. The Cassini Division is the darker area at the upper left-hand portion of the picture.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For a desolation to be beautiful, there must be something special. Just after Dr. Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the moon, Neil Armstrong asked him what were his thoughts. He replied, "it's a magnificent desolation". Nearly forty years later, Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Cowen combine the wizardry of IMAX with the magic of top flight professional entertainers to the film Magnificent Desolation. The result puts the viewer on the surface of the moon and lets them experience its strange but magnificent beauty all for themselves.

NASA has announced its fifth Centennial Challenges prize competition: the Regolith Excavation Challenge. Teams will compete head to head in 2006 or 2007 to see whose digging machine can excavate the most lunar soil, or regolith, in 30 minutes and deliver it to a collector. Any future moon base will require large quantities of regolith to be moved around by robotic diggers, so NASA is hoping to see innovative ideas now to base future technologies around.

Mars is a more dramatically changing place than scientists had ever imagined. Thanks to its long lifetime, the Mars Global Surveyor has spotted a gully coming down the side of a sand dune that didn't exist just three years ago. The gully could have formed when frozen carbon dioxide was suddenly warmed up enough that it evaporated, releasing gas that flowed downhill like a liquid. Mars Global Surveyor is still very healthy, and could be making observations 5-10 years from now.

Newborn stars hide in a shroud of dust and gas, so they're difficult to photograph. Astronomers have used the infrared UKIRT telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii to peer through one of these envelopes to see a pair of newborn stars - probably only 100,000 years old. The stars are quite large; however, they weigh 10 times the mass of the Sun together. The surrounding disk of material probably has enough left over to create 100 Jupiter-mass planets.

Astronomers have known about a strange blue light coming from the heart of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) for many years, but they were never sure exactly what it was. Thanks to new observations from Hubble, they now know it's a ring of young hot stars which are whipping around the supermassive black hole in the middle of M31. The 400 stars are packed into a disk only 1 light-year across, which is nestled inside a larger ring of older, redder stars. Our own Milky Way might have a similar phenomenon, which means this could be the situation in most galaxies.

Of all the meteorites found around the world, on 45 formed before our Solar System. They provide a unique insight into the composition of the stellar nebula that went on to form our Sun and planets. These early rocks have very few volatile materials in them, like zinc, lead and sodium. So this "volatile depletion" must have been one of the first things to happen in the stellar nebula, and not during planetary formation as previously believed.

Astronomers from Case Western Reserve University have created the deepest, wide-view image of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, which shows the faint web of starlight that connects the different galaxies together. The image was built up over the course of 14 moonless nights using the newly refurbished 24-inch Burrell Schmidt telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. This web of stars is evidence of the violent collisions that galaxies go through as they merge together to form larger galaxies.

Researchers from Open University have uncovered that the Earth suffered a sudden, severe period of global warming approximately 180 million years ago. During this period, vast quantities of methane gas were released in three huge pulses when underwater stores of gas hydrate melted. This greenhouse gas warmed the Earth by 10 degrees C and resulted in the extinction of many species on land and in the oceans.

Scientists celebrated this week after finally seeing ghostly spokes in Saturn's rings. These spokes were first discovered by NASA's Voyager spacecraft 25 years ago, but so far, Cassini had failed to image them. These spokes are about 2,500 km long and 100 km wide (2,200 miles by 60 miles), and are believed to be created by Saturn's magnetic field interacting with the rings. Scientists thought that the visibility of the spokes depended on the angle of Saturn's rings to the Sun; the less sunlight, the easier it should be to spot the spokes.

Cassini has taken images of what seems to be an ancient shoreline cutting across Titan's southern hemisphere. The shoreline runs about 1,700 km long by 170 km wide (1,060 miles by 106 miles) and might still have liquid present. There is evidence for networks of channels that feed liquid - most likely liquid hydrocarbons - into this "ocean"; some might come from springs, while others will have to have been fed by rainfall. Cassini's next flyby is set for October 26, 2005.

Some people dream in black and white while others dream in techni-colour. Daydreamers wander the realm of possibilities just as well as the sleepers. Subjects of dreams differ as greatly as the dreamer. Engineers, particularly astro-engineers, probably have recurrent dreams of launching into a project destined for the stars. Well, if dreams don't come true, there's always the pen and paper. That's how the book The Rocket Company by Patrick Stiennon and David Hoerr seems to have risen. Using the literary licence of a fictional company, the authors bring a wealth of non-fictional detail to a pleasant little dream.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Let's begin the week early in the morning by watching Saturn dancing near the "Beehive", move into the night with the ISS and a great a variable star - Eta Aquilae. As the skies darken this week, we'll return to the Andromeda galaxy and hunt down the M30. Have you ever seen the "Saturn" or "Helix" nebulae? Don't think them too difficult to find, because a few simple tricks will turn you into a pro and you'll find Neptune as well! Hang on, it just gets better as the Aurigid meteor shower peaks and a new comet joins some old favourites. So turn your eyes to the skies, because...

Here's what's up!

NASA has unveiled more details about its upcoming series of missions to return humans to the Moon as early as 2018. The new crew vehicle will look very similar to the old Apollo module but it will be three times larger, allowing four astronauts to travel to the Moon at a time. Each ship can be reused 10 times, and NASA hopes to get as many as 2 launches a year, with astronauts spending 4-7 days on the surface. Eventually, once a lunar outpost is built at the southern pole, astronauts will be able to live on the Moon for 6 months at a time.

Planets in the inner Solar System suffered two devastating periods of asteroid bombardment. Scientists are fairly certain that the early period came from asteroids identical to the space rocks in the current main belt between Mars and Jupiter. The second period is a bit of a mystery, though. Scientists now think that there was a period at the end of planetary formation when the giant planets swept up leftover material and hurled much outwards, but also some towards the inner Solar System.

Researchers have had a few months to crunch through the data collected during Deep Impact's collision with Comet Tempel 1. The latest research published in the Journal Science used findings from three giant telescopes atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The observations determined that as much as 25 fully-loaded tractor trailer-trucks worth of material was excavated out by the impact. The comet seems to have a complex mix of silicates, water and organic compounds beneath its surface.

NASA has two new Earth Observation satellites in the final stages of preparation before their launch: CloudSat and Calipso. The two satellites will be launched together by a Boeing Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. They will be launched into a polar orbit, and maintain a close formation. CloudSat has an extremely powerful cloud-profiling radar, which can distinguish between cloud particles and precipitation. Calipso will be able to detect aerosol particles in the air, and can tell the difference between these particles and clouds to measure the amount of air pollution. They may launch as soon as October 26.

Since it's in my neighbourhood, globally speaking, I thought I'd mention that the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, which is located in Southeast British Columbia, will be having an open house on Saturday, September 24. They've got a 26-metre radio dish, and many other instruments. It would be a great opportunity to see the equipment and meet radio astronomers, so if you live nearby, put this on your calendar. (Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend... maybe next year).

Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today

Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft arrived at Asteroid Itokawa earlier this week, and now it's sending back beautiful images. This image is a composite colour image of the asteroid taken on September 12 using red, green and blue filters. It's also possible to see its irregular shape. Hayabusa will eventually land on the surface of Itokawa, collect samples to be sent back to Earth. The probe's sample return capsule is expected to return to Earth in June 2007.

A team of Canadian engineers have developed a tiny 3.5 kg satellite that could unleash a whole new industry of microsatellites. The Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment 2 (CanX-2) is about the size of a shoebox, but it packs a mini-spectrometer that will measure greenhouse gasses - for only $1 million in development costs. Future missions will hope to demonstrate how fleets of inexpensive microsatellites might be able to serve the same function as satellites that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to design and manufacture.

The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a supermassive black hole without a surrounding galaxy. These black holes and their galaxies are usually linked, so it's an unusual discovery. One possibility is that the host galaxy was stripped away during a collision with another galaxy. Another possibility is that the black hole is surrounded by a large amount of material, it's just dark matter, so Hubble couldn't detect it.

In preparation for its arrival at Mars next year, NASA has begun putting the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter through its paces. Controllers pointed its three cameras at the Moon and the stars, They also tested the spacecraft's onboard Context Camera and Optical Navigation Camera, and also its high-gain antenna for transmitting back to Earth. MRO was able to send back 75 gigabits of data in less than 24 hours, which is a new record for communicating with a spacecraft. It will enter Mars orbit on March 10, 2006.

A recent conversation on the Bad Astronomy/Universe Today forum got me thinking. Member "parallaxicity" wanted to know where the next generation of unmanned probes should be sent. Should we investigate Europa, and dig through its icy skin? Or what about building a blimp that could float in Titan's thick atmosphere analyzing the surface in incredible detail? Let me just wipe the drool from my chin; some of these missions would be so cool. But you know, I'll have to take a pass. Right now, I think we need to focus on one thing...

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have used primitive meteorites called chondrites to develop a model of the Earth's early atmosphere. And it looked nothing like what we have today. Instead of the familiar oxygen and nitrogen, our early atmosphere would have been a toxic mixture of methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water vapour. Simulating this early environment was actually quite difficult to calculate because the minerals of the early Earth reacted to the hot environment in hard-to-predict ways.

Cassini scientists have assembled this mosaic image of a region on Titan called Fensal-Aztlan. The northern part of the region, "Fensal", has small islands which range in size from 5 to 40 km (3 to 25 miles) across, while the southern "Aztlan" region mostly lacks these islands. The "islands" are thought to be raised areas of water ice, surrounded by dark particulate material which came out of the atmosphere.

The Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) on board the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft malfunctioned a few months ago, and the agency wants to know why. The instrument was working perfectly for two years, and made the surprising discovery of methane in Mars' atmosphere. It might be malfunctioning because of spacecraft vibration, but the source of the problem is still under investigation. Even if engineers can't get the instrument working again, the spacecraft still has another 6 which are working fine.

Although astronomers have discovered plenty of comets, they've always thought it was just a fraction (less than 3%) of the number of comets out there - and one of them might have our names on it. Fortunately, this scenario doesn't seem so likely, according to new research from scientists at the Australian National University, astronomers have probably found more like 20% of comets. That means that small comets, capable of destroying a city, probably only hit the Earth once every 40 million years, and big continent-busting comets probably only hit us once every 150 million years.

The Hubble Space Telescope used its Advanced Camera for Surveys to capture this beautiful photograph of the Boomerang Nebula. This cloud of dust and gas has two nearly symmetric cones of material coming out of it. It was created through a process called bipolar outflow, where a dying star ejects material as it spins. It could be that the star is surrounded by a disk of dust, so only the top and bottom material can escape, or a powerful magnetic field is shaping it as it escapes.